TAQWA. A crucial Islamic concept, taqwa essentially signifies “god-consciousness” and “godfearing” and, by extension, “piety,” with which it seems to have a partially comparable semantic history. Taqwd and its derivatives occur more than 250 times in the Qur’an; it has been rendered variously as: fear, godfearing, godliness, piety, right conduct, righteousness, virtue, warding-offevil, wariness. A
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TAQLID. Discussions of reform movements in modern Islam frequently depict these movements as aimed primarily at the eradication of a frame of mind called taghd in Arabic. Often this term is translated as “blind imitation,” meaning unquestioning and uncritical conformity to the patterns of behavior and doctrines inherited from past generations. Many writers on modern
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TAQIYAH is the precautionary dissimulation of religious belief and practice in the face of persecution. All Muslims recognize the personal duty of affirming right and forbidding wrong, but they also admit that, when confronted by an overwhelming injustice that threatens the well-being of an individual, this obligation can be fulfilled secretly in the heart rather
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TANZIMAT. The Turkish term Tanzimat (“regulation”) denotes a period of social and political reform that transformed the Ottoman Empire by integrating into it institutions deliberately copied from those of western Europe. The period is generally agreed to begin with the proclamation of the quasi-constitutional Charter of Giilhane in 1839, but its terminal date is harder
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TANZANIA. Although Islam was practiced in East African coastal enclaves and off-shore islands such as Zanzibar (that are now part of Tanzania) as early as the twelfth century CE, only at the end of the nineteenth century did it become a truly popular religion. Its spread from the coast to surrounding areas was linked to
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TALEQANI, MAHMUD (1910-1979), Iranian cleric and political activist, a key ideologue of the Islamic Revolution Of 1978-1979. Talegani (or Taliqani) was born into a family of `ulama’ (religious scholars) in the Taleqan Valley northwest of Tehran and spent his childhood in the capital, where his father was prayer leader of a mosque. After extensive studies
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TAKFIR WA AL-HIJRAH, JAMA`AT AL-. After a group of radical Muslims in Cairo abducted and assassinated Shaykh Muhammad Husayn al-Dhahabi, a former Egyptian minister of awqaf and Azhar affairs, in July 1977, the Egyptian media referred to this group as Jama`at al-Takfir wa al-Hijrah. The term defies simple definition, but the meaning is clear: the
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TAJIKISTAN. An independent state in Central Asia as of December 1991, Tajikistan was formerly a constituent republic of the Soviet Union. In the nineteenth century the area was divided between the emirate of Bukhara and the khanate of Kokand; in the late nineteenth century, Kokand was annexed by the Russian Empire. By the beginning of
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TAGHUT. The term taghut, from the root tghy (“to rebel, transgress, or overstep the mark”), occurs eight times in the Qur’an, where it denotes a focus of worship other than God and so is often translated as “idols” or “Satan.” But its meaning is wider than this: surah 4.6o refers to taking cases for judgment
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TAFSIR. Exegesis of the Qur’an is known as tafsir. The focus in this article will be on Sunni tafsir, but Shi’i tafsir will also be discussed. The Qur’an, regarded as the word of God, needed tafsir-elucidation, explanation, interpretation, or commentary-for an obvious reason: it had to be understood clearly and fully so that its commandments
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